MTE 2019 - Imagining the next marketplace

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Imagining the next marketplace

Today, only ten percent of global shopping happens via e-commerce platforms. But that is changing fast. New retail players are emerging - and some of the best known bricks and mortar businesses are quickly transitioning into e-commerce powers. Did you know that Walmart is one of the largest e-commerce platforms in China? Or that Instagram is evolving into a marketplace?

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Meet the Panelists

As the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Antler (www.antler.co), Magnus Grimeland leads a global team dedicated to developing the next generation of world-changing companies and, creating a global pipeline for top talents to pursue a career in entrepreneurship and innovation. Mr. Grimeland is passionate about helping aspiring leaders build businesses that can positively impact local, regional and global economies. In an age where both talent and technology are global, Mr. Grimeland and his team believe that anyone with the right talent, drive and ambition can change the world. He is now dedicated to finding these key individuals and providing them with the infrastructure, support and investments needed to build great companies. With over a decade of experience under his belt, Magnus is most prominently known for co-founding ZALORA.com, Asia’s largest fashion eCommerce company. ZALORA.com was later acquired by Global Fashion Group (GFG), the latter of which he served as COO and Managing Director, rolling out the firm’s marketplace across 26 countries. He was responsible for strategic market initiatives and improving the business across SEA, the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Oceania. Mr. Grimeland is an alumnus of Harvard University and McKinsey & Company, at which he worked for six years. His last role at McKinsey & Company was as a Junior Partner, working across North America, Europe and Asia in the global telecom, media and high-tech industries. As for public service, Mr. Grimeland served within the Royal Norwegian Navy Special Operations - Marinejegerkommandoen (Navy Seals). He also served as Captain in the Royal National Lifeboat Institution in the United Kingdom, while attending United World College (UWC) of the Atlantic, during which he received several certifications in mountain rescue. He was also part of setting up a development project in Kantalumba, Zambia, targeted at clean water, electricity, basic health-care training and building sustainable businesses. Mr. Grimeland is an active angel investor in Asia and Europe, having played a part in building several smaller businesses, e.g. Startupmatcher (job marketplace), CrimsonReading (books marketplace), Klikr (social network) and KGI (real-estate).

Magnus Grimeland

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Antler

Jennifer Garcia is a proven B2B and B2C marketing leader, with more than 13 years of experience in product marketing, customer marketing, strategic communications and go-to-market program development. As Head of Interests Product Marketing at Instagram, she leads the go-to-market strategy for three product pillars at the company: Shopping, Discovery and IGTV. In this role, Mrs. Garcia partners closely with Instagram’s product leadership team to launch and grow consumer adoption for the company’s emerging product experiences. Previous to Instagram, Mrs. Garcia held various marketing positions at Google, where she led Product Marketing for Google Maps for Work and Customer Marketing for Google Cloud. Prior to joining Google, she lead Integrated Marketing in Australia and New Zealand for Nokia Location and Commerce, managed Corporate Communications for NAVTEQ, a digital mapping company based in Chicago, and began her career in a public affairs role at Hill & Knowlton. Mrs. Garcia holds a master’s degree in Public Affairs from the University of Wisconsin and a bachelor’s degree from Allegheny College. She currently resides in Westport, Connecticut with her husband and their two children.

Jennifer Garcia

Head of Interests Product Marketing, Instagram

Zhiyu Chen joined Walmart China in June 2017, and is now taking responsibility for Walmart China E-Commerce, Marketing, and Sam’s Club Membership. Zhiyu is committed to expanding omni-channel E-Commerce business, and building multi-access brand awareness through digital transformation. In his early career, Zhiyu was VP, Transactional FX at Barclays Bank in London and Hong Kong. After, Zhiyu held several positions at Alibaba Group including Head of Alipay International Financial Products, and Chief Commercial and Product Officer at AliExpress. Zhiyu has a degree in Engineering from Zhejiang University, and a post-graduate degree in Biomedical Engineering from Oxford University, UK.

Zhiyu Chen

Senior Vice President of E-Commerce and Marketing, Walmart China

Glen Kacher formed Light Street in 2010. Prior to forming Light Street, he was with Integral Capital Partners, where he joined as a Principal in 1998 and became a Managing Director in 2000. Integral typically invested 70% of each of its funds in public companies, with the remainder in private companies. At Integral, Mr. Kacher developed portfolio strategy, researched companies and executed trades. Areas of investment included software, internet, media, eCommerce, mobile hardware, PC hardware, security software and networking. He led or co-led many of Integral’s venture investments during his tenure, including Agile Software (IPO, acquired by Oracle), Arcsight (IPO, acquired by HP), BlueNile (IPO), Epiphany (IPO, acquired by SSA), Extensity (IPO, acquired by Geac), Fortify Software (acquired by HP), Interwoven (IPO, acquired by Autonomy), LogMeIn (IPO), OpenTable (IPO), and Overture/Goto.com (IPO, acquired by Yahoo). Prior to joining Integral, Mr. Kacher was with Tiger Management from 1993 to 1996 as a full-time Research Analyst, and from 1996 to 1997 as a part-time Consultant. At Tiger, he focused on investments in the software, hardware and networking industries. Mr. Kacher holds an M.B.A. from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, 1998, and a B.S. in Commerce with Distinction from the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce, 1993.

Glen Kacher

President and Chief Investment Officer, Light Street Capital

I’m the co-chair of this year’s J.P. Morgan Tech Exchange. In the last nine months we have been spending a lot of time thinking about what are the interesting topics in areas we want to show to our guests and clients this year. Not surprisingly, e-commerce still is on top of our list, because if you think about global shopping still only ten percent of the global shopping is on the e-commerce or E platform, most of them are still offline, so the growth capability is still very significant and we want to address that part, but we are doing that in a quite different way, we’re addressing that through three different angles by three very different speakers. One of them is Walmart. Most people know Walmart as the largest retailer in the world; they do very successful traditional brick and mortar sales, however very few people know that they are actually one of the largest e-commerce platform in China. They have been developing that in the past ten years, successfully transforming a traditional retailer into online space. The second aspect of today’s topic is actually from social media. We actually invited the head of marketing for Instagram to discuss their new initiative, which is called Shopping on Instagram, with us today. Facebook introduced Shopping on Instagram less than ten days ago on their developer conference, that was extremely exciting because most people think Instagram as just a traditional social media platform where friends will share their interests um and hobbies. Very few people know that now you can actually look at your friends’ interests and hobbies, for example what they like to wear or what they like to eat, and you can just point on the picture, or even the videos, and you can actually make the direct purchase of that product on Instagram without even leaving the application. And the convenience factor is one very successful and important factor that would drive this future e-commerce business, so we think this is a very important point that most of our clients and guests should be aware of. I think one important part we are addressing, this is we have many clients and guests in the audience who actually run traditionally businesses; they know traditional advertisement but many of them have never thought about using social media to actually help them to increase sales. So today we hope that Instagram can help them to do that through social media. The last speaker of our e-commerce panel is actually coming from a company called Antler, Antler is a very successful incubator and accelerator in southeast Asia; they specifically focus on e-commerce startups. The founder of Antler used to actually run a very successful company called Zalora which is an online retailer which was a very successful platform in southeast Asia, so they have a very interesting and different angle to counter what Instagram and Walmart, which are all of course very large companies in the e-commerce space, but coming from a very small startup angle, how to make it important and how to make you successful in a space is what they are-, he’s able to share. And I think one major takeaway that I got from that panel is - even if you’re thinking about online e-commerce platforms, he thinks the most important factor to become a successful company is people and also execution capabilities, which many people may not be focusing on because as our clients and guests are looking for startup investment opportunities in the e-commerce space, most people probably focus too much on the idea itself, less so about the people and the founders of these companies.

Read these three figures; they are thought-provoking:

Imagining the Next Marketplace

The Staggering Potential of the AIoT

China + Internet + Entertainment

Video in Demand 24/7

Leading Digital Bank

COMING SOON

A Technology Renaissance

Unpacking the Technological Cold War

The Future is Electric

COMING SOON

Preparing for our AI Future

COMING SOON

The Display of the Future

COMING SOON

The Cybersecurity Marathon Has Only Just Begun

COMING SOON

Magnus Grimeland, the Founder of Antler, a startup generator that links emerging entrepreneurs with funding and connections, is also inspired by names like Shopee, Lazada, Tokopedia, Go-Jek and Grab. “I think that the biggest opportunities in Southeast Asia now are within the e-commerce space,” he says. “Over the last seven months in Southeast Asia we built 30 companies, of which about 40 per cent are e-commerce marketplace-related companies.” With young populations and ‘driven,’ ‘tenacious’ new entrepreneurs, the pace of change is staggering. Evidently, this can also present challenges. Grimeland recounts an instance when a warehouse was hastily developed to have the potential to process the orders of millions of products. The only problem was that there were no roads to the warehouse. “Sometimes when you're building a tech company you’re really spending the weekend building a road,” he says.

The E-Commerce landscape in Asia

Beyond the obvious commercial advantages of scaling up digital sales, retailers are also finding immense value in the knowledge they can acquire from analyzing customers’ online activity.

In the past, the traditional retailer would only see transactions as people check out

Zhiyu Chen Senior Vice President of E-Commerce and Marketing Walmart China

Data comes first

A future of AI

“In the past, the traditional retailer would only see transactions as people check out,” says Zhiyu. It wasn’t previously possible to see the products that had been browsed by customers, and the data was not able to link transactions to people with a great deal of sophistication. With new analytics tools, e-commerce providers are now able to assist vendors with the development and release strategies of their new products. Equipped with that intelligence, the online product sellers become more sophisticated partners to their clients. “We might test new ideas, new products,” says Zhiyu. “They might fail–and that's fine. We can then see it from the charts and rethink the strategy.”

you don't need to hire a big team of data scientists or a big team of specialists

Magnus Grimeland Founder and Chief Executive Officer Antler

So where are we heading? It is clear that Artificial Intelligence and machine learning will play an increasingly important role in the future of e-commerce, and a suite of new applications has already arrived. Magnus Grimeland has been part of the development of an agritech company that uses AI to optimize feed for livestock, a deep space company that uses AI to better maintain infrastructure, and a beauty product line that works within Instagram to tailor offerings based on the appearance of users. “The amazing thing right now is that you don't need to hire a big team of data scientists or a big team of specialists,” says Grimeland, who points out that large companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Tencent and Alibaba have off-the-shelf services that can “very quickly solve problems that create the tunnel value for both businesses and consumers.” Alternatively, you can also consider the smaller scale providers. “We work with the incubators,” says Zhiyu Chen, “because quite often they have innovative solutions but they struggle to find the people who are willing to give them problems to solve.”

Imagining the Next Marketplace

Albert Yang

Head of Alternative Investments for Asia J.P. Morgan Private Bank

The estimated cost to the U.S. economy of malicious cyber activity in 2016[1]

US$110 billion

The expected size of the cybersecurity market by 2024[2]

US$300 billion

The record cybersecurity Venture Capital investment in 2018[3]

US$5.3 billion

As usual, the Asian region has been at the forefront of change. China already has 20% of retail transactions occurring online, with consumers embracing the convenience and breadth of products and services offered on their mobile phones. But China isn’t the only place to find inspiration.

Today the vast majority of products are still bought and sold in the offline world. E-commerce currently represents about ten per cent of global shopping, however, things are changing, and rapidly. As the behavior of younger generations increasingly shapes the trajectory of markets across the globe, the social media space is looming as a key battleground for retailers large and small. So what is going to push the proportion of online sales from 10% to 20%? What are the key innovations being developed? And which countries are pioneering the change? This article is based on a panel discussion at the 2019 J.P. Morgan Tech Exchange.

Zhiyu Chen is a Senior Vice President at Walmart, and the man in charge of China domestic inbound and outbound e-commerce marketing for both Sam's Club and Walmart China. As an employee of a brand best known for its large-scale offline offerings, the growth he has seen from the company’s online marketplace has been cause for optimism.

The great online migration

“We do see this progressing further,” he says, “and we want to be part of that story.” “Shopping is a task I would say would almost completely migrate to online,” says Zhiyu, who also foresees the emergence of an “omni channel shopping experience.” For him, innovation of ideas is not necessarily the primary path to success. “It's not about the fastest one to come up with a new idea,” he says, “it's about the fastest one to execute and then grow in physical scale.”

Shopping is a task I would say would almost completely migrate to online

Zhiyu Chen Senior Vice President of E-Commerce and Marketing Walmart China

It is one thing to sell products, but quite another to inspire demand from customers. Jennifer Garcia is Head of Consumer Product Marketing at Instagram, which is currently transitioning as a primary marketplace in addition to a social media platform.

“For Instagram to be successful in commerce, we really need to start to drive recognition of our app as a place you can shop,” she says. “Traditionally, users have gone to our app to discover products but not necessarily to intentionally buy products.” A key factor that Instagram has in its favour is the attention of Generation Z, which is composed of people aged seven to 22. This rising demographic has specific online behaviors that marketers are keenly observing. “One: they take cues from influencers,” says Garcia. “Two: personalization is everything; and three: they're wedded to their phone.” Instagram, as a predominantly phone-based application that uses machine learning to personalize ‘feeds’ and the broader user experience, is uniquely positioned to take advantage of this demographic. “On our platform, we give people unrivaled access to people,” says Garcia. “And that includes friends and family on one side of the spectrum, but it also includes top celebrities, influencers, and niche creators who are all actively engaging in our platform.”

Adapting to Gen Z

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Hannah Qiu Co-General Manager Ping An OneConnect